


Supernova

by alloutforthewar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloutforthewar/pseuds/alloutforthewar





	Supernova

He is looking at her as if there has never been anyone else and, no, there has never been anyone else. Since the moment she met him, since the moment she first touched him, it has been his skin, his hands, his scent, his eyes, before she even knew it was him it was him. 

He has crawled beneath her skin like one of his creatures, and maybe together they are an X-File, because she never knew it could be like this with another person. 

To have the boundaries of her self border so closely with his, for her autonomy to run parallel to him, for every breath she takes to be one he has first exhaled. Even when they are apart they are together and she always prided herself on being independent but this is dependence with a capital D. 

This is what she was warned about, this is losing herself in another person and wrapping her own self worth up in his opinion of her. 

Her mother looks at her with tear filled eyes and her brother watches her in anger, but _he_ , he looks at her as though she is the sun and the moon and the stars all together. But she is none of those things and she is dying, growing smaller and smaller each day, a supernova in the making, and she feels it is quite possible that he is the only reason she is alive at all. 

No, she doesn’t feel it, she knows it. 

He is the only reason she is alive at all. 

She has never been afraid of dying but now she is terrified, she is terrified for him and what this will do to him. She wants to make him promise her that he will continue to live, because it doesn’t seem like a sure thing and she isn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t do the same in his position. It is unfathomable and she is grateful to be the one leaving not the one left behind.

“Mom,” she rasps, “Mom promise me you’ll look after him.”

Her mother only sniffs.

“He won’t want you to but he’ll need help. Mom?”

Maggie nods, twin tear tracks on her cheeks.

She should have told him that she loved him. Why have they never said it, why has she never told him? It makes little sense to her now. She vows to do it differently next time, to tell him every day, with words and with her hands. To make sure he knows he is loved. 

* * *

And he is her salvation. 

Of course.

He beams and she lives and she remembers her vow to tell him what she feels, but it seems too tenuous right now, there is too much at stake, and is it not enough that they get to be together a little longer?

She has time, he has bought her more time, and she will get to it, she will.

But for now she sits opposite him in a dark, dusty basement and argues against his theories, for now she chases after him in Florida forests and hugs him to her body for warmth, for now she lets him be there when her world is blown apart by a little girl. And that feels like enough.

For now.


End file.
